A320 family
ASZOfamily
The decision to develop the Airbus A3 20 around a fly-by-wire flight-control system was "...one of the most difficult I ever made", says the coonsortium's ex-presi
dent Roger Beteille. "Perhaps we were too bold
- we had no choice. Eidier we were going to be
first with new technologies or we could not
expect to be in die market."
That the A3 20 saw the light of day as an
Airbus project - and tiiat it was launched before
die A340 - was die result of protracted negotia
tions widiin European aerospace manufacturers
as to die form such an aircraft should take and
the industry grouping which would build it.
While Europe's aerospace companies had
been striving to make a success of the original
A300 programme in the early 1970s, studies
were quietly being undertaken in parallel to
develop a new narrowbodied airliner family to
succeed Europe's first-generation jet-powered
airliners such as die British Aircraft Corporation
(BAC) One-Eleven and Sud Aviation Caravelle.
The need for a 150-seater to compete as a
replacement for die hugely successful Boeing
737-200 and McDonnell Douglas DC-9 had
already seen several different European pro
grammes planned, all of which were stillborn.
Airbus, still only a manufacturer of widebodies,
remained on die sidelines.
Among the many groups with ideas for a new
aircraft were Europlane, witii Germany's MBB,
the UK's BAC, Sweden's Saab-Scania and CASA
of Spain, proposing a rear-engined 180/200-
seater, dubbed EUROPLANE. The aircraft was
dropped only after it became clear that it was
moving too close to xhe existing A310. Another
team, consisting of VFW-Fokker and Dornier
in Germany and Hawker-Siddeley in the UK,
pursued various 150-seater configurations,
while France's Dassault opted fora longer-range
version of its Mercure - which led to a Dassault-
Aerospatiale-McDonnell Douglas team devel
oping the Advanced Short/ Medium Range
Transport. This was also abandoned.
Driven by worries that the chance to compete
witii die USA would be missed, a new pro
gramme was started, involving all the Airbus
partner companies, but not Airbus itself. This
was die Joint European Transport (JET), which
encompassed a family of three aircraft sizes with
seating for between 130 and 188 passengers.
With power being provided by two wing-
mounted CFM International CFM56s and a
cruise speed ofMach 0.84, die JET proved to be
a forerunner of the A320 family.
According to one Airbus source, the team
members eventually ".. .saw die light", die pro
gramme being handed to the consortium, and
Airbus' single-aisle (SA) team was formed in
Toulouse, headed by ex-JET team leader Derek
Brown, in 1980 to spearhead the move into die
narrowbodied market. The consortium initially
studied a three-aircraft, 125- to 180-seat, family
dubbed the SA1, SA2 and SA3.
In February 1981, the SA projects were redes
ignated under "A320" name and, although
Airbus focused on die 150-seat SA2 model, the
other projects would eventually be undertaken,
becoming the A319 and A321.
During 1981, Airbus ".. .worked closely with
Delta Air Lines, which had a specific require
ment for a 150-seater, the so-called Delta III
requirement," says Airbus vice president strat
egic planning Adam Brown. As a result, Airbus
decided to offer just one fuselage-lengdi, seating
150 passengers in a two-class layout".. .so, you
could say Delta invented die A320, although it
never bought the aircraft", he says.
By now, it was becoming clear that the next
Airbus family member would be a single-aisle
model - although this resulted in a major dis
agreement with die German industry, pushed by
Lufthansa's preference for a long-range quad-
engined widebody. Beteille explains die decision
in favour of the shorter-range, aircraft rather
than Lufthansa's preferred long-range quad.
"I wanted the A320 because we were planning
to introduce a lot of new technology, including
fly-by-wire, which meant that any serious
difficulties would be solved more easily if the air
craft were nearer to home," he says.
Now came the decision on the fuselage diam
eter, Beteille says: "Either we had to use die
Boeing section from the 707 and 727 [and later
die 737), or do somediing better." The result
was a wider section - 3.7m internal diameter
against 3.45m for the Boeings, which, he admits,
"...cost us a couple of hundred kilograms".
Efficiency was the name of die game, and the
battle to reduce weight never ceased, with
Beteille insisting at one point that the aircraft
was "unsaleable" because it was "4t too heavy".
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